Why Long-Term Retirement Planning Requires Discipline and Trust

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Featuring

Linda Reynolds Phil Reynolds

Transcript

Recorded June 2012

Phil Reynolds: When Linda and I first started out, it was 1976, the Bicentennial. We’d started dating and decided to get married. And we were really well off at the time. (Laughs) We only had $500 — and I say we, I should say, Linda had — $500.

Linda Reynolds: And two crummy cars and two little girls.

Phil: So we had to work our way to get to what we’ve got today. Well, with John our advisor — “Steady Eddie” — we selected him about 36 years ago and we’ve had a relationship since. And I wouldn’t dream of changing that either. But he didn’t go for the home runs or the grand slams. I just liked the idea of doubles and triples, and things like that.

Linda: He would make us save even when it was harder, you know, when the kids were little.

Phil: And we didn’t drive new cars every year, or things like that. We lived conservatively. And that’s one thing, we have two meetings a year, where we sit down face to face, plan ahead and prepare for it. That’s the main goal, to earn or make money on the savings and be able to retire and enjoy life and play with the grandkids when we want.

We were worried about 2008. Everything was going right down into the dumps and we were sweating, until we sat down with John. We talked about selling, and after he really explained the whole situation, said just stay in there and hang on. He was just Steady Eddie.

Linda: He always said that we were diversified, too. That’s what you always told me is, don’t worry, don’t worry.

Phil: Yeah, ‘cause John was telling me don’t worry, we’re okay. It was a lot of sweat.

Linda: It was scary.

Phil: We’ve been real fortunate because we’ve had somebody else to work with that we trusted and help plan our non-working life. Get rich quick isn’t my style. Conservative investing has got us this far, so… We just want a good income, and we can do what we want to do. And we have fun.

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